The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

Saturday I turn 44. I look 44. A few years ago, I tried really hard to hide the fact that I was in my 40s. I was, in fact, idiotic.  It happens. Now, each day, I look in the mirror and think, Hey, only one new wrinkle. Dang girl, you're looking good! Yeah.  At some point, I had this shift.  Instead of all the stuff going wrong, I started being really grateful for all the stuff that's going right. Which tops my list: 1.  Glad to be alive, just because I am ALIVE .  It's a blessing to be able to be in this miraculous world right at this moment. 2. Watching my children grow up .  Rearing children is the stuff of jugglers, optimists, heroes, mathematicians, estheticians, nutritionalists and magicians. Watching them leap out of the nest and fly, more awesome (and terrifying) than I ever expected.  Moses, it's amazing.  Thank you, God, for letting me be here to watch this . . . please help me not to mess it up. 3...

Mount Nebo, about thirty or forty miles as the crow flies, is on fire.  The whole valley is filled with thick smoke and if the wind is wrong, our valley fills with smoke so dense we can hardly see anything at all.  The air is stale with old smoke and burning.  At night, from our dinning room table, we watch the glow of the mountain fire and say quiet prayers that everyone fighting it will be safe and that by some miracle the weather will change and we will get rain (there is none in sight in the next ten days) to help change the tide and lower the fire risk everywhere. Fall in AF Canyon It has been such a bone dry year.  The leaves in the mountains aren't changing, the trees are literally dying.  Everything is dusty and brittle and the air itself smells dry.  The fear of fire in the mountains is with each of us every day.  This record heat of a September doesn't help matters.  There is . . . quite frankly nothing to do but pray that no on...